Editorial pubs.acs.org/ac
Are We Growing More Picky, More Careless or Simply under More Pressure?
O
It is reassuring to see that our authors are being careful and correcting their mistakes. While the examples described by Fang and Casadevall1 cannot be taken lightly, it appears that thus far, Analytical Chemistry has escaped the ignominy of retractions caused by fraud... and for that we can all be proud.
ne of the more unexpected questions I have received as Editor of Analytical Chemistry is whether we have seen a rise in corrections and retractions. An Editorial in 2011 by the editors of Infection and Immunity1 reported striking increases in the numbers of retractions and corrections in the scientific literature, concerns echoed by Richard Van Noorden in a News Feature in Nature.2 In a more recent piece in the New York Times,3 Carl Zimmer summarized several key issues relating to these concerns, including calls for reforms in scientific publishing. According to Van Noorden,2 about 27,000 articles appear each week in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database; of these, about 200 (
